


To Find My Way Back

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:06:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1949295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Porthos is injured and Aramis heals him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Find My Way Back

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally part of a larger story but it didn't ultimately end up fitting, so I made it a separate one-shot instead.

There’s a joke to be had about how things could have gone a hell of a lot better than they did – a little less sword to the face, a little less the criminal they’re escorting back to Paris outrunning them for about a day’s ride, a little less chaos and mayhem – which, on a good day, Porthos wouldn’t mind too much, so long as it was in their favor. Porthos, of course, knows better than to voice this joke because Aramis is liable to bite his head off right now, with his face edge with his worry.

Aramis’ fingertips are gentle on his face as he tilts it back. Porthos is drunk enough that his face is lax and he’s just blinking a little stupidly at him when Aramis examines the wound on his face. 

“It’ll most certainly scar,” Aramis says with a sigh, dabbing the cloth across his forehead and sweeping down. “Although it’s a miracle it didn’t catch your eye.” 

“Lucky me,” Porthos slurs out, drunken and unhappy and his left eye pained, aching something fierce and unapologetic deep down to his bones. Although, he should be grateful he isn’t blinded. He flinches away when Aramis touches at the wound with the alcohol-soaked rag. “Fuck!” 

Porthos is no guest to pain – he’s grown up in a cruel world, and suffered injuries long before he became a soldier. He is no stranger. Still, he never grew used to the pain, the way some soldiers do – hardened over, impervious to it, sometimes even welcoming it as a reminder of living. To men like Aramis, there’s a kind of comfort in violence and pain – a certain thrill that leaves a man coveting it long after the whispered shadow of ache has departed. And while Porthos would never shun away the life he’s chosen for himself, pain is something he’s never adjusted to, never found solace in. 

“Don’t squirm,” Aramis says, and his voice is sharp and tight and Porthos blinks his eyes open to see Aramis frowning at him – or, rather, at the wound, in his concentration. 

Porthos’ brow furrows and Aramis heaves out a sigh, directing him with a calm glance, his expression smoothing out temporarily as his eyes find him. “Porthos, I need you to relax. I can’t have your face all scrunched up when I stitch this or else the scar won’t be even and you’ll be stuck in a grimace forever.” He sighs out, rubbing his thumb at Porthos’ temple, as if trying to pacify him – although, Porthos thinks quietly to himself, it’s most likely Aramis who needs the reassurance. Aramis frowns. “I knew we should have stopped.”

“He’d have gotten away,” Porthos mutters.

“I wish I had more to work with,” Aramis sighs, as if Porthos hasn’t spoken, his thumb rubbing that soothing circle against his scalp. Aramis breathes, “Already it’s clear to see this eye won’t open as widely as the other.” 

“What’s an eye?” Porthos asks. 

“Don’t say that,” Aramis says – or more like snaps out, and his face grows tight and grim. Porthos opens his eyes, and this close, he can see clearly where the grim set of Aramis’ jaw clenches, where he’s missed a spot trimming his beard and there are a few stray hairs jutting out from his jaw. He can see the heavy determination in his eyes, the lines beginning in the corners of his eyes and mouth. 

Porthos needs another drink. He leans away from Aramis’ mother-hen insistent poking and prodding and stretches out for the bottle of wine. He takes a hefty drink, trying to dull his senses and the sharp edge of pain and the heavy weight in his chest that erupts whenever Aramis looks at him as if he is an invalid. He can feel the drizzle of blood lining against his eyebrow before Aramis leans in and wipes it away. 

“It could have been so much worse,” Aramis whispers, sounding pained. “But… it could certainly have gone much better.” 

Porthos shrugs with a nonchalance he doesn’t fully feel. “There are worse things than blindness.” 

“And there are certainly better things, too,” Aramis snaps, and again he looks far too angry to be properly feeling the emotion – it almost feels as if he is exaggerating the emotion, if only to impress upon Porthos his depths of his dislike. Porthos accepts it with a sigh, closing his eyes and just shaking his head, accepting this as his fate but hating that such an expression would be on his face at all. 

“Just get it over with,” he says quietly, iced over.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Aramis sighs out and gets back to work.

Porthos keeps his eyes shut as Aramis works, trying not to flinch or grimace. Part of him wishes he could keep drinking the wine, that way he might just pass out and be done with it. Instead, he’s painfully aware of every movement that Aramis makes – the soft swish of his shirt sleeves as he rolls them up, the swipe of the thread through the needle as he readies it, the texture slide of a thumb across his brow, touching him as if he is valued and precious, as if he will be missed should he disappear. 

“Oh, Porthos,” Aramis breathes, sighing out in an exhale that sounds more like a prayer, more like a plea for vindication. “You have to be more careful.”

“Comes with being a soldier,” Porthos mutters as an excuse.

“Please,” Aramis says.

Porthos blinks his eyes open and looks at him, and then manages the smallest of nods when he understands that terrified expression on Aramis’ face. 

“Please,” Aramis says, his voice catching on something raw inside his throat, “Stop flinching, for the love of all things holy.” 

Porthos is used to the way Aramis’ voice will lilt, intimate and comforting, and with him so close now he can hear the differences in the voice, the subtle yet present tone of his disapproval and discomfort, his worry and distraction pulling down hard on his voice. 

“None of you are allowed to outlive me,” Aramis whispers.

“And neither are you,” Porthos says back. His throat feels constrained, for half a second, and he’s torn between hitting Aramis or hugging him until he can’t speak such words. As it is, he stays still, feeling overwhelmed and incapable of much insight or diligence. His head is swimming. 

Aramis smiles, brittle and tender, and closes his eyes for a moment before ducking his head to the needle, focusing on his work. Porthos tries his hardest not to flinch, but it’s proving damn near impossible – he feels drunk, but also entirely too jittery, like he’s about to flinch out of his seat. 

“I don’t want you to worry,” he says at last.

Aramis shakes his head. “You know that I will. I always will. It’s you.”

Porthos looks at Aramis and Aramis watches him, stroking his fingers over his face, as if he is something precious, not as if he is fragile or unworthy or anything other than himself. And he closes his eyes because he knows that he has so much more left to live and so much left to do, and he gives him that, if only for a brief moment – that kind of comfort and distraction, that kind of loyalty and compassion that lets him know that he can be free, that he can be himself, that he can be happy.

Once Porthos stops flinching enough to satisfy Aramis, it is what feels like hundreds of stitches, but in reality is merely a dozen or so. Porthos grips the edge of his seat to keep from jerking back, to keep from flinching away and making the wound worse, or get a needle to the eye for his troubles. Aramis cups the back of his head with one hand as he works, alternating between cradling his skull or shifting his hand to touch his cheek, tilt his head from side to side so he can catch the light. Porthos keeps his eyes closed, can only imagine the expression that Aramis graces him with. Sometimes he even cards his fingers through Porthos’ hair, fingers curling into his curls as easy as breathing, thumb following the lines of his neck, gliding over the bumps of his spine at his shoulders. It’s comforting, the way he traces down, circling his thumbs against the nape of his neck, the center of his spine, the dimples at the base of his back – his touch lingering, each time, anchoring him with that touch rather than the less than intimate touch of a needle to his face. These moments are short – only when he’s giving Porthos that moment to ground himself again. The pain is hardly anything for most, but for him it is intense and twisting, and it takes everything he has not to flinch away or cry out. He hates that pain, reminds him too much of years best left in the past. 

When it is finished, Aramis breathes out, cleans his hands, and then the needle falls away and Aramis cups his face, looking at him with a tender expression, soft and vulnerable and gentle. 

“I care for you – a great deal,” he says, and Porthos nods because – well. He’d known. For a long time, he’d known. He’d known even when it’s not the words that Aramis is saying, but the way he says it. “Don’t let all my needlework go to waste, hm? I’d be quite distressed.” 

“Me too,” he says, and finds that it’s just as easy as he’d imagined it’d be.


End file.
